Interrogator describes Khadr as “beat up” and detained in “one of the worst places on Earth.”

Washington lawyer Kobie Flowers questions Damien Corsetti, a former army interrogator nicknamed "The Monster," on Wednesday. Canadian detainee Omar Khadr watches the video testimony from a monitor on his desk at the Guantanamo Bay hearing.

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA —Damien Corsetti was known as “The Monster” during his time at the U.S. prison in Bagram when he met Canadian prisoner Omar Khadr.

The imposing, bald, former army interrogator is now a disabled veteran receiving treatment for post traumatic stress disorder and testified Wednesday war crimes hearings here about what one lawyer called his “soft spot” for the Toronto-born detainee.

He described a 15-year-old Khadr as an injured “child” detained in “one of the worst places on Earth.”

“More than anything, he looked beat up. He was a 15-year-old kid with three holes in his body, a bunch of shrapnel in his face,” Corsetti said about his encounter with Khadr at military hospital on July 29, 2002.

“That was what I remember. How horrible this 15-year-old child looked.”

Khadr was shot and captured following a firefight with U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002. The Pentagon alleges that Khadr threw a grenade before his capture that fatally wounded Delta Force soldier Christopher Speer.

Corsetti, who testified by video from Arlington, Va., told the court that he was not one of Khadr’s interrogators but befriended the Canadian and was present during his “in processing” questioning at the military hospital.

Corsetti said Khadr was known among the guards and interrogators as “Buckshot BOB,” due to his injuries. All detainees were nicknamed BOB for “Bad Odour Boys.”

The former interrogator testified that dogs were present at Bagram and there was the sound of screaming and yelling “continuously.” Corsetti also said interrogations included threats of sending detainees to Israel and Egypt, but did not know if Khadr had been told this.

Corsetti was a soldier with the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, which served both at the prison in Afghanistan known as the Bagram Collection Point and later in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

Along with other members of his unit, Corsetti was charged in connection with the death of an innocent Afghan taxi driver detained at Bagram and the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib.

On June 1, 2006, a military jury acquitted Corsetti of the Bagram charges and five months later he left the Army with an honorable discharge. He was later reprimanded for conducting an “unauthorized interrogation” in Iraq.

On Wednesday, Corsetti testified that the pressure to get information from prisoner at Bagram was intense.

“This was less than a year after 9/11 so we’re all still pretty heated up about that,” he told military judge Army Col. Patrick Parrish Wednesday.

“This was life and death stuff we were supposedly dealing with. There was just a ton of pressure on us to get information to save lives and generate reports.”

Corsetti came to Bagram with the word “Monster” already tattooed across his chest – a tribute to a dead friend who once gave him the nickname, he said in a past interview.

Corsetti was the defence team’s first witness at these pre-trial hearings to determine whether the statements he made as a teenager to interrogators could be used at his trial – or if they should be excluded as products of torture.

Testifying as one of the prosecution’s final witnesses Wednesday was an army ophthalmologist who was flown to Bagram from Kuwait to operate on Khadr. Dr. Marjorie Mosier described in detail the care Khadr received to save the sight in his right eye.

Col. James Post, the commander of the Bagram hospital where Khadr was brought unconscious and where he underwent a series of operations, also described in detail Wednesday the care the Canadian prisoner received.

Post refuted the allegations contained in a court affidavit that Khadr had been interrogated in the base hospital or shackled by his legs and arms – saying neither practice would have been permitted.

“Our place was a place of healing,” Post stated. “It was not a place for interrogations.”

Joshua Claus, Khadr’s chief interrogator at Bagram and arguably the defense’s most important witness, is expected to testify Thursday morning.

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